


A Study of Anomalies of the Natural World

by PositivelyVexed



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: For Science!, Getting Together, Multi, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29280150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/pseuds/PositivelyVexed
Summary: Rose has never studied a more fascinating zoological phenomenon.
Relationships: Benjamin January/Rose Vitrac January/Abishag Shaw
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	A Study of Anomalies of the Natural World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadlikeknives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/gifts).



Her subject sits uneasily among the glass vessels and brass instruments, looking strikingly out of place, stringy ditchwater hair hanging in curtains around his face, goose pimple raised on bare skin. She would never have expected to have a half-naked American as a subject in her laboratory, but then, she never expected to discover a natural phenomenon like this.

“Thank you,” she says. “For agreeing to this.”

“‘S’no trouble at all,” he says, voice light and scratchy, long fingers stretching and curling against his pant legs, radiating vague self-consciousness. “S'pose anyone was going to, uh, study me, I’m glad it’s you.” His eyes flick to his side. “Both of you.”

Ben sits in the corner, watching the proceeding, his face carefully arranged in an expression of neutral interest. He’s had several days for the shock to wear off, for his initial dismay at a discovery that rocked his understanding the world to remake itself into curiosity. Ben wasn’t, as a rule, delighted the way Rose was by new discoveries that shook the foundation of the world, but he was too honest and too curious not to take an interest in understanding the matter thoroughly once it presented itself.

She loved that in him. That he was the kind of man who, upon discovering that his friend and only ally in the New Orleans City Guard was a loup garou, he did not hesitate to tell her. Also, that he was the kind of man had no objection to his wife studying another man in a state of partial undress in her laboratory.

Few women have ever been so lucky in love.

And few scientists had ever been so lucky in having hitherto thought-legendary creature fall into their laps.

Over her plain blue frock, is the many-pocketed once-white smock she long ago set aside for working in her laboratory. She pulls a pen and small notebook out of one of the pockets and starts making notes.

His height, his weight, his dimensions, his remarkable strength, none of which is new to her after working with the man in some capacity over the last few years, except for the shirtlessness, revealing a chest crisscrossed with scars and the puckered remains of deep gashes taken from his skin. 

“Did you acquire any of those while in your... other form?”

He considers the question. “Probably couldn't give a full accounting, but this--” he nods to a white gouge mark on his shoulder, “came when I was young, just sniffin’ around. Stuck my face in a hole I shouldn’t have. Ma badger took a bite out of me for that one.”

“Remarkable,” she murmurs, unable to avoid glancing over to Ben, who is frowning at Shaw, processing the absurdity of the image of Shaw as a young werewolf.

She catches his eye and smiles, and he softens, returning a smile. “I can tell you’re enjoying this,” Ben says to her.

“Aren’t you?” she asks. “There aren’t many people who can say they’ve discovered something of this magnitude.”

In the past few days she’s had trouble sleeping, so overwhelmed by the possibilities opening up before her she’s been. Not since she was a child, looking upon the makeshift laboratory she was given one year, has she felt more beckoned by the mysteries of the natural world to study and understand.

“I have a series of questions I’d like to ask--” she begins.

“No problem.” Shaw licks his lips. “I’m sure ‘preciative of you both taking this with as little consternation as you have. Most people, in my experience, can be a mite close-minded on the topic of… such things.”

“I truly don't understand anyone who wouldn't be excited by this. Discovering that the world is more mysterious and complex than I ever imagined,” She rifles through her pockets, trying to double-check she has all the instruments she needs on hand. “The opportunity to understand the mechanism behind this! The implications for natural history and the diversity of species…. ”

“I don’t know about all that,” Shaw mutters, looking away. “Always thought it was just… something that happened. Like what your sister,” he address this to Ben, “might call otherworldly forces.”

“Yes,” she sighs, waving her hand. “But if we dismiss every observed anomaly as otherworldly without even considering a naturalistic explanation, then we never have a chance of learning that there is any earthly explanation,” she says.

“Well, then,” Shaw says gravely. “I offer myself fully up to science.” He looks at them. “Good thing you two are the sharpest practitioners of it I know.” He says it calmly, with all the faith in the world. A faint glow of warmth touches her cheeks. Being treated seriously as a scientist is still a rare enough pleasure for her. A moment of pride she’s learned the hard way she can never take for granted in this country. But pride it is. She likes to think that she doesn’t flatter herself that she is the right person for the job. At the very least, he won’t be cut up, sent into a traveling show. Mellified or preserved in formaldehyde.

He sits on the chair, and he looks faintly nervous, like he can intuit she’s picturing such grisly fates for him. She flexes a reassuring smile, although that’s really more Ben’s thing. He’s the one who usually has to trouble with bedside manner. 

Shaw is her first human--well, mostly human--subject.

She’s never made a habit of openly observing men, having instead mastered a lifetime of studying them without letting them know they’re being studied. But here, in this space, she studies her subject frankly. Eyes flickering over him. Ben watches too. Not moving or interrupting as she walks around the American, taking measurements, making brief sketches of injuries, and asking questions, as Shaw responds. 

When did it begin?

As far back as he can remember.

Does he know anyone else with this... peculiar affliction?

The only ones he ever knew were his mother and sister.

Ben starts behind her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Not like you could have, Maestro,” Shaw murmurs.

She understands the pain of losing the only family who understands you. “That must have been hard for you.”

“Nothing to be done about it,” he says tightly, trying to sound easy. “My ma never said much about it, ‘cept it was something ancient, old as the family itself.”

 _Hereditary._ She makes a note of that.

She considers asking him about the night Ben learned of his secret, but she holds off. She’s heard the story from Ben. She’ll save that request for another time. 

If she’s being honest, she’s impatient to get to the transformation. To see with her own eyes what her husband already has. She’s been impatient since she first learned.

__

“I’m going to need you to tell me everything,” she said, sitting beside her husband. You’re being far too enticing with these dark insinuations. I’m going to be disappointed if this story is anything less than fit for a gothic novel.”

He lets out a weak bark of a laugh. “I don’t think it will disappoint you.”

She can see the unsettled look on his face as she bends over his medical bag, drawing out clean linen to redress his leg wound. It’s the same troubled look he often has on his face when speaking about Shaw. It came, she knows, from being unable to fully explain his friendship with the man, or to understand the man’s loyalty to him. She’s tried to broach the subject with him once or twice before--the fact of the man’s obvious admiration for Ben--but he brushes it away, disbelieving or uncomfortable. She can’t blame him for that. The struggle to trust someone who has so much power to hurt. She understands that intimately. The bone-deep fear arising from such terrible power, and she knows it will probably always be there. A function of survival in this world. 

But it’s obvious looking at her husband and Shaw interact, why the man helps Ben. That he thinks highly of him, higher than any white man, besides perhaps Hannibal. Higher than most of the people in his life. 

But tonight, she learns, his troubled expression has little to do with Shaw’s evident loyalty to him, and everything to do with the fact that not long ago, he was trapped in the hull of a keelboat with a group of Kaintucks at his throat. 

She’d helped him as much as she could with the case, concerning a missing longshoreman and free man of color, M. Alarie. She had known Ben had gone out to investigate that night. 

She hadn’t been with him when he had learned that M. Alarie was being held on a keelboat heading out that very night for an auction in Natchez and rushed to intercept them. That was how, according to Ben, he ended up alone, holding one contraband knife to defend himself against a group of three armed Americans. 

He looks haunted as he tells the story. He’d been in tight scrapes before, they both had, but at that moment he feared that this would be the one to end him.

“What happened?” she leans in, even as her fingers continue to work the gauze with practice.

“A wolf appeared.”

“A wolf?” she repeats. She pauses in her bandage dressing.

"Just wait," he says. 

He hadn’t even known what it was at first, in the dark of the boat’s hold. Just that something leapt down through the deckhatch to the hold below. It was only when it paused in the patch of moonlight cast through the open hatch that he saw it was a shabby grey wolf, lean and powerful, its teeth bared. It looked around the hold, seemed to balk at the sight of him, then turn turned and attacked the Kaintucks. 

“It balked at the sight of you,” she repeats.

He continues, like he hasn’t even heard her. The sudden appearance of the wolf threw the hold into chaos. Bullets ricocheted wildly in the dark, one whistling by Ben’s ear. One of the men found him and swung a knife at him, and Ben had fought back. He killed the man, but immediately felt the pain of a bullet passing through his leg.

When the bloodhaze of pain cleared, he realized he was alone. The three men dead, and the wolf growling above one of them, snout and teeth dripping with blood. He could only assume he was next, so he snatched an unfired pistol from one of the dead men’s pockets, and leveled it at the wolf.

He pauses in the story, his eyes unfocused. 

“Well, what happened?” she insists. “If you’re trying to build suspense for me, I must say it’s working.”

He frowns, and she sees that he’s struggling to make himself continue. “It changed.”

The vicious creature’s entire demeanor when faced with Ben, and the pistol. It became as docile as a dog, sitting down on its belly and ducking his snout in his paws, whimpering. But that wasn’t all. It’s pale grey eyes were fixed on his. Unblinking and insistent. Pleading, Ben thought, before dismissing it. It was, altogether, the strangest behavior he’d ever seen from animal, and it made him pause.

The wolf started to wriggle on its belly away from him, backwards. keeping the pose of submission. Like it wanted to reassure him.

“That doesn’t sound--” she begins.

“You didn’t see it,” is all Ben says.

He was so puzzled he lowered the gun a fraction, and the wolf let out a short, appreciative bark. 

Ben asked the wolf to do it again. He couldn’t say why he asked it. It was such strange behavior, he didn’t quite no what else to do. It wagged its tail at the order and barked again. At that moment, Ben was halfway convinced he was dealing with a well-trained dog that only looked uncannily like a wolf.

Come here, he said, and the wolf obeyed, tentatively, crawling forward. 

“You’re a strange one, aren’t you?” He asked. The wolf paused, tilting its head, and barked once. 

The wolf whimpered and stretched out his tongue to lick his boot, pale grey eyes fixed on his. It made a worried sound and whimpered again, its tongue moving this time to the blood on his leg. It let out a low, mournful howl.

At last, he stretched out his hand toward it, and touched its fur. He couldn’t believe that the animal’s tail was wagging. This was no ordinary dog either. He thought.

The wolf got up and trotted to the ladder, the only way out of the hold. It looked between him and the hatch several times, before putting its forepaw on the first rung of the ladder and whimpering.

“I don’t know how either of us is going to get out of here,” he told the wolf as he made a tourniquet of his belt around his leg. “I’m not sure I can walk.”

It trotted back over to him and whimpered at the wound, scratching at the floor beside him, then began circling the ladder in tight, distressed rotations. 

He leaned back against the wall, unsettled by his strange new roommate. “Whatever you are, it appears we’re stuck here. At least until someone comes to retrieve us.” The sweat broke out on his face at the implication of the words slowly dawned on him. “It occurs to me that there might be more to this gang of kidnappers than these three. If their collaborators start to wonder why the boat hasn’t left yet, and come on board…”

He let the ugly thought hang in the air, unvoiced. The wolf let out a low howl, and resumed its distressed pacing even faster, stopping once again to put both forepaws on the ladder, like it was trying to contemplate climbing the ladder out. 

The thoughts that were forming in his head about this animal were as troubling as the image of more Kaintucks arriving while he was trapped down here, immobile.

“What in God’s name are you?” he snapped at the creature.

He pushed himself up, painfully, wincing. He had to get out of here. The wolf gave a sharp, reproachful bark at him for it (not reproachful, a wolf didn’t care what he did to his leg.) 

It trotted over and leaned down and licked his hand. He petted its head, once. 

“I don’t know what you are or what you want from me, but it’s the only way,” he said, dragging himself painfully across the hold, his leg screaming out in pain behind him.

He took his eyes off the wolf for only a couple seconds at most.

He heard a strange sound, like the clicking of claws against the floor and a soft thump on the floor, and then a hand--a human hand--came into his line of sight. Extended, offering him a lift up. He had the sudden impression of a warm, naked body kneeling beside him. He jerked his eyes, in terror, and there was Shaw beside him, crouching, looking apologetic.

“Let me help you there, Maestro.”

Ben was too stunned to react, just felt his eyes clawing around the room for the wolf, that had disappeared as suddenly as Shaw appeared. His eyes flicked back up to the tall, shabby man who knelt naked before him. Under scrutiny, Shaw putting a hand in his lap out of some meagre and belated bid for modesty. 

“Guess I owe you something of an explanation, Maestro. But first, let’s get you and M. Alarie off off this boat.”

__

It takes Ben repeating the story several times before she fully believes it. That her husband spent a portion of the night trapped in a keelboat with a wolf, and that that wolf transformed itself to be a naked lieutenant of the New Orleans City Guard, defying all known natural laws.

“He was hoping he could escape without revealing himself to me. But there was no way out of there without him transforming. Apparently he’s been doing it all his life. Transforming. Like that. Only when needed of course. Like when he knew the only way to get to M. Alarie in time was by following his scent. ” He throws his hands up in the air. “If you wish to divorce me for having devolved into the ramblings of a madman, I can’t say I blame you.”

Rose takes his strong hand in hers and squeezes it. She says, simply, “I must see this at once.”

__ 

“I’m ready when you are, Madame Janvier,” Shaw says.

Leg still bandaged, Ben tenses slightly in his seat, but he nods.

She’s set up a curtain on one side of the laboratory, creating a private space he can change behind. She wants more than anything to see the transformation with her own eyes, to know whether he changes all at once or if there is some sort of between state between the two forms, like a larva to a moth, but it seems indecent to ask him to reveal that. She is already stretching the bonds of decency just having an American in her house. " _Animal_ ," she remembers Ben's mother sneering about Shaw, and it's all she can do not to burst out laughing at how unwittingly on target she was.

“‘Preciate it, Ma’am,” he says softly. 

He steps behind the curtain, and she has a moment’s doubt, an irrational voice telling her that this must be some sort of prank. She hears movement behind the curtain, rustling, then realizes it’s nothing more than the Lieutenant removing what remains of his clothes, and her face heats imperceptibly. There’s something vulnerable about it, having this man change in front of her and her husband, because she wants it. She isn’t sure she should like the feeling as much as she does, holding the power to ask this, and both of them willing. Ben watches, an unreadable expression on his face.

The wolf that trots out from the behind the curtain is larger than she expected. It’s scruffy, fur a dingy shade of grey. But it moves with an intention and caution, and its grey eyes that focus on hers speak to some deeper intelligence. She pulls open the curtain, just to be sure, and just as she knew there would be, there is nothing but a plain of blank wall and Shaw’s shabby pants laying in a heap on the floor.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that,” Ben muses.

“It’s going to be so hard not to write this up and publish in _The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society_ ,” she moans, feeling an almost physical ache from the weight of knowledge she must suppress in her chest. The wolf tilts his head at her, and puts his head down on the floor. “But I won’t,” she assures him.

She pauses, thoughtfully. “It must have been hard, to keep it a secret for so long,” she muses.

The wolf looks between them both, its eyes looking troubled, and lets out a bark.

He whimpers, and trots forward, sits himself in front of her, upright.

She takes a moment to clean her thick glasses, then kneels before Shaw. “May I touch you?” she asks. He steps forward, eyes flicking between her and Ben. His fur is softer to the touch than she expected, and for a moment, she loses herself in the simple pleasure of the touch, of such a wondrous animal real and solid beneath her hand, standing patient and ready for her word.

“Come here,” she says to Ben, smiling at him. “I’m going to need a medical professional here to help me with some of these observations.”

“I didn’t know when this started I would be drafted into assistant werewolf researcher,” he says archly, but he gets up, the limp still prominent in his leg. It makes her wince in sympathy as he walks over, and makes her ache with grateful again that he’s hear with her. That he didn’t suffer anything worse than an injured leg on that keelboat. Her hand tightens in the fur of the wolf’s neck, and she finds herself scratching the wolf’s ears, thinking t _hank you_. She can’t help but smile as she notices the wolf’s tail wagging as Ben, too, bends down, and buries his hand in the soft fur. 

__

The lycanthropic research goes on.

One of the great pleasures of owning their own house is that Shaw can arrive, once every couple weeks or so, and they can simply usher him in, without needing permission from Ben’s distrustful landlady.

The other great pleasure is her well-stocked laboratory, where she take blood samples and fur samples for her microscopes, filling notebooks of observations, and afterwards, pours over papers on orthogenesis and acquired inheritance, hoping she can find some theory that can explains Shaw’s unique condition.

Not answers emerge, but she learns more about how being a werewolf works for him. She learns how he perceives the world differently when he’s the wolf. That he can’t reason as highly, his human concerns overridden by other instincts. It’s one of the reasons he doesn’t often transform, except in dire cases. But when he does, there’s a deep and abiding pleasure in being the wolf, in escaping the shackles of New Orleans society and the higher concerns of humanity, and just existing. A wild animal in the boundless world.

She finds herself strangely moved by the thought. There’s a part of her that can’t help imagining it. Disappearing, slipping out of her own body, all the slights and scars accumulated over a lifetime, and roaming freely. To live in the world unbound by any of who she is as a human. 

She’s happy with Ben, happier than she’s ever been, and she’s guilty for even thinking it...but her mind returns to it.

“I’ve been reading nursery stories about loup garous,” she says one day, when Ben has gone upstairs to fetch coffee. “Some of them tell stories of a loup garou passing the ability on to someone else. Through a bite, say. Have you ever….?”

His expression softens. He seems to understand the question behind the question. “Can’t say I have that particular skill. I’ve wondered before, if I would pass it along, if I could. It’s as much a curse as a blessing. When you’re the wolf, you lose something of yourself. It can be hard to pull yourself back to humanity, when you’re out there, in the wild. Your friendships and your principles seem pretty weak, the longer you stay out there. There’ve been times I almost didn’t come back. It was hard to do it, had to dig deeper in myself to hang on to a reason than I thought I could. But when I came back, when I was starin’ up at the sky as a man, not an animal, thought about all I nearly lost--” he shrugs. “It’s enough, to stay human sometimes.”

She smiles, wistfully. “I suppose that’s so.”

He slouches in his seat, staring in evident fascination at an empty boiling flask, cloudy from repeated use. “I know that ain’t helpful. Hearing it from someone who’s got the option, I mean,” he admits. “Sounds a mite hypocritical, lecturing on the topic of being fully human.” He pauses, focused on that boiling flask. It’s funny, she thinks, how much easier it is for him to look them straight in the eye when he’s a wolf. “But if you’re going to be a human all the time, I hope you don’t mind my saying that you’re one of the finest ones I’ve met. You and your husband both.”

__

Ben warms to the task of being her apprentice werewolf researcher, providing what battery of medical tests he can. This time, he measures Shaw’s heart rate as wolf and human, under various conditions, comparing the differences. She sees the way they draw together, as Ben uses his stethoscope on the man, the way his normally assured hands get clumsy, and Shaw glances away, and it makes her wonder. She’s seen similar moments that made her wonder, and decided she’s imagining it.

It’s strange, when she realizes she hopes she’s not imagining it.

__

One day, during a research day, Ben has a piano lesson with a new student. He’s walking out of the house with his sheet music in hand when Shaw appears on the porch for their study. Ben looks between the two of them. “Go ahead without me, if you want,” he says calmly. 

Shaw turns to her, confused, and she steers him inside, before anyone can see and wonder at exactly what the nature of the American policeman’s frequent visits are.

In the laboratory, the two of them sit. Shaw keeps glancing at the seat Ben usually sits in and stalling, like it’s a known indiscretion to transform into a werewolf in front of a married woman without her husband present.

“Good to see the Maestro walking without a limp,” he says.

“That’s thanks to you,” she says. “Bisclavret’s king could not have asked for a better protector.”

He tilts his head, questioning. She chides herself, it’s the sort of reference she’d make to Ben, or Hannibal. She shouldn’t have expected he’d know.

“It’s a medeival story. By a woman called Marie de France.”

He tilts his head. “I don’t know too much about the middle ages, but I wouldn't have thought educated women were thick on the ground back then,” he says, and pauses. "Educated men, neither, to be fair." 

She laughs. “Well, you would be right. But she was, and she used her education to tell stories. This one was about a loyal knight who also happens to be a werewolf. One day, he becomes trapped as a wolf when someone steals his clothes. Lost and alone in the woods, the king’s hunt comes upon him, and he throws himself at the feet of the king. He was so affectionate to the king, and so unlike a wild wolf, that the king takes him in. Eventually, the king recognizes him, and has his clothes returned to him, and the knight is restored, and the two embrace.”

He looks thoughtful. "I s’pose I like that. ‘Course, there aren’t too many story about werewolves that end well for them. I’ll be grateful for any I can get."

The wistful expression on his face twists her heart a bit. She finds herself saying, "I loved it as a girl. I think I was a little in love with both of them. The knight and his king."

He's been smiling, an expression that always transforms his face in ways that surprise her. But now a shadow crosses across, and he looks away. 

__

Ben has to travel upriver several miles for a party, far into American territory. He’d normally refuse, but money’s been so tight this summer. 

She lets him go, alone, anxiety knotting the pit of her stomach. She’d normally feel better about it, because Hannibal would be with him, but he’s still in Mexico, pursuing his romance. Ben makes the journey alone.

The night passes, and Ben doesn’t return when he's expected to. She doesn’t start to worry until she’s confronted with the sun setting, and the knowledge that she still hasn’t heard from Ben. She sends a terse message to the Cabildo, trying to fight down the fear in her chest, and gets a message back a few hours later, saying that Lieutenant Shaw is outside of New Orleans for the time being.

Fear sharpens down the back of her neck. She wonders, spitefully, if Shaw’s out roaming the woods as a wolf. Indifferent to the cares of the city, slipping the bonds of society that the rest of them have to live by, which are already so much tighter for them.

She’s pacing the front gallery when she sees two familiar figures walking up the street, leaning on each other for support.

She runs down and meets them on the front porch. Her husband leaning on Shaw for support, who has his arm around him, steering him in. “Sorry, I couldn’t return your husband home sooner to you,” Shaw grunts. “Fucking Americans.”

She ignores that irony, and runs up to Ben, putting her hands on his. “Did they…?”

“I’m fine,” Ben mutters. “I’ll be fine. Just my leg. Someone managed to kick it right where the gunshot was. I should be fine if I can get off my feet for a while.”

Together, she and Shaw get him to bed. She watches over him until Ben falls asleep, then looks up at Shaw, who’s been in the doorway watching, like he’s afraid to sully the master bedroom with his presence. 

“There was a fight,” he says shortly. “Couple of guests drunker than fish getting into a pissing match, which turned into an all out brawl. Your husband here had to break it up before they went crashing out the second story gallery. That’s when one of those shitheels got him in the leg. Course, they didn’t take kindly to being brought in line by your husband. One thing led to another, and an accusation of assault was made.”

She feels the old familiar anger boil under her vein. She urges calm.

“But he was released,” she said.

“Yeah… Might have taken some persuading, on my part, but yeah. We would have made it back sooner, but we missed yesterday's sternwheeler back to New Orleans. Had to come back on today's.”

She sighs. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. “Come downstairs. I’ll make you some dinner.”

“You don’t have to…”

“I’d feel better, doing something.”

They sit around the table, eating a cold meal. It reassures her to learn that he wasn’t arrested. Shaw intervened before that could even happen. And paid for his night’s performance from the homeowner, no less.

“What I don’t understand is what you were doing out at a party that far away,” she murmurs, half lost in thoughts of Ben upstairs.

He ducks his head. 

She looks at him suspiciously. “Did you follow him out there?”

He shrugs, looking embarrassed. “Didn’t really mean too. I was actually tracking some killers escaped from a prison boat last week. Doing some hunting for clues in the woods.”

“As a wolf, you mean?” she asks, amused despite herself.

“It’s the most efficient way to track. No sense in not doing it if I’m going to be out in the woods anyway. But I kept thinking about that party upriver you’d been worrying about. I’d been there myself, know what pieces of work live on that plantation. Guess I was worrying too. Maybe… made my way up there. Just to keep an eye on him.“

“As a wolf, you tracked him twenty miles because you were concerned?” she asks.

He shrugs. Shifts a little uncomfortably in his chair. “Suppose it seems a mite excessive, when you put it like that.”

She leans back in her chair. Something seems to click into place for her. She leans forward.

“You worry for him as much as I do,” she said. 

His eyes flicker to her, surprised. He drops his gaze quickly when he sees the question there. 

Before he does, she can see the enormity of the laid out there guilt, the regret shame. Found out. 

She stands back and takes temperature of what she feels, as if she is her own test subject now. Runs through the list of things she knows she should feel: anger, or fear, or territorial jealousy. It’s none of that. 

“I was afraid of what I felt for him for a long time, too,” she says gently. “I was afraid to ask for what I wanted.”

He looks away, startled. Afraid to hope. "I got nothing to ask for," he mutters. "I've already got more than enough."

__

That night, she speaks to Ben.

He looks at her with bemusement in his eyes, a touch of devout Catholic dismay, a man who’s always reliably gone to Confession. But he listen to her, and looks thoughtful afterward. He’s always been a detective through and through, able to follow the evidence where it leads.

It takes him some time to come around on the idea. She can sense when he’s worrying over a problem. She can hear it at the piano, in the favoring of the more wild, staccato pieces from Brahms, like he’s trying to work through what he’s feeling in music.

It’s nearly a week later when he brings the topic up to her. “You don’t think less of me?” he asks. “You would be happy?”

She pulls him close and kisses him.

__

Shaw comes over, and he follows them to the laboratory. If he notices the fact that she and Ben are holding hands, he doesn’t comment on it.

In the laboratory, he turns. Sees no instruments out ,as there normally would be. He looks around, puzzled. “We not doing any research today?”

“Not today, but stay a while,” she says. “Be human.” She moves towards him and takes his hand, taking Ben’s hand in the other. He looks so startled at the sight that he nearly back up right into one of the lab tables, looking between them, bordering on alarm.

“What?”

“I think I’ve finally reached my first round of conclusions,” she says. Squeezing his hand she tugs him towards the both of them. Looking wary, but with a dawning kind of hope in his eyes, he lets himself be tugged.

"Are you sure?" he asks. "I don't want to come in between.” 

Ben steps forward, and touches his cheek. Shaw leans into the touch. It’s movement that seems instinctive between them, animalistic and deeply human at once, and fires something deep within her. "We're sure," Ben says.


End file.
